Interacting with Designers

Hello,

I have a development process question I hope some can shed light on.

I am working with a project team as the lead programmer (PHP/MySQL project). I do not do any of the design work. The designers do not understand PHP or dynamic web page design. I am very familiar with HTML (coding), etc, but do not have the creative talent.

The designers "know" what they want the site to look like when it is complete.

What development process do you use in similar situations?

The last project we worked on was a nightmare; the designers developed the pages in HTML and I converted them to PHP (dynamic), but the problem here is when they change a page it requires me to get back involved simply for a design change.

I have read the article Modular Web Pages at http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/PHP/modular_Web_Page/1/

I thought this might be an approach.

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Sorry for the long posting, but this a bit of a theoretical question.

I have been out PHP development (last project was PHP3) for about a year and want to get this project started off correctly.

I am open to any examples, libraries, tools, etc. that would assist in project development.

Thank you in advance,
Kevin

From my experience, this is how it's usually done.

• Designers create the site look and feel in Photoshop (or whatever their choosen design tool is.)
• Designers send the files off to the production team (HTML/CSS savvy people), who chop up the images and create the HTML.
• You, as a coder takes these HTML files and make them "templatable". Having the HTML "skins" templated is crucial. Your template files should be in plain HTML, or some easily editable form, making it simple for the production team to implement site changes, without interfering with your php code.

I don't know what is available in the PHP world as far as templating systems go, but I'm sure google does.